Day Zero Project #69: Attend a music festival.

Originally this goal was on the list as "Camp at a music festival", but a Summer shoulder surgery for my wife made that option a no-go, so I had to modify this slightly to "Attend a music festival." This is probably a good thing because, although I was looking forward to getting to Bonnaroo for the first time, I also know that I am far too old for 4am drum circles.

So last weekend we took our slightly modified goal and made our way up to Gainesville for The Fest 13, a music festival we've been going to anyways for the past seven years. It's basically one weekend in Florida where almost all of our favorite bands are in one spot and you just jump around venues checking out great band after great band. All the while, you are also drinking too much beer and eating far too much vegetarian food.

To sum it up in picture form you'd have blurry, tipsy picture taking while singing along to your favorite songs.

Spiderman crowd surfing as one of your favorite band's plays At The Drive-In songs.

And fun bands with a stand-up bass that is almost as big as the venue.

In other words, it's perfect. You should check it out.

And because I like lists, here are my Top 5 sets for the weekend (in no particular order):

Captain, We're Sinking
The Sidekicks
Solids
Greenland is Melting
The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die

So, yeah, I kinda cheated on this one, but I had a great time and staying at the Econolodge in Gainesville is probably less appealing than camping in the middle of  a mud field.

Day Zero Project #5: Get a caricature done of myself.

This is me as an action figure. Thanks to CartoonMe at fiverr.com

And as a bonus here's my wife via the guy who writes the wonderful comic, Caribbean Blue.

Day Zero Project #12: Make miso soup from scratch.

You may remember that the other day I tried my hand at rolling sushi and I figured that miso soup goes pretty well with mediocre sushi, so I also made sure to get this goal accomplished on the same day.

For those of you who have never made miso soup before it could be the most easy dish in the entire world to make. One could technically mix miso into water and have a very low-brow miso soup that wouldn't be very good but at least you'd get to check it off your list.

But that's not how I roll. I figured I should at least put some effort into it and make the dashi (broth). So while at a visit to the Chinese supermarket I made sure to pick up some bonito flakes (terrible smelling flaked, dried bonito fish) and kombu (a weird looking kind of kelp).

Alton Brown used to be one of my food heros before he gave up Good Eats and started hosting lame challenge shows, so I stuck to his recipe for the most part.

After you have the dashi made, you just throw in some miso, some tofu, some scallions, some mushrooms (if you remembered them, I got lost admiring all the weird foods in the supermarket, so I forgot). Again, basically copy Alton Brown.

That's it. It's a very simple and delicious side dish.

And why did someone feel the need to put this easy dish on their goal list? Who knows, but I think they won't have a problem accomplishing it.

Day Zero Project #42: Learn to roll sushi.

Every time that I start one of these new projects I have this vision in my head of how I'm going to do whatever it is absolutely perfect. Nevermind that I've never tried it, it's going to be great. Try my hand at painting? It'll be a Picasso. Run a 5K? I'll do it at a 4 minute mile pace.

It's like my mind forgets that people practice to get good at things and assumes that I'm naturally going to be the best at everything. I think this is a sign of some serious humbleness problems.

And, even though I know that I can never get anything perfect on the first try, I started the rice with the thought in my head that I was going to serve perfectly rolled sushi for dinner.

Step one was to visit the Asian market and get lost in there for three hours looking at all the different groceries and buying one of pretty much everything when you only wanted to get some sushi rice and a bamboo mat.

I ended up walking out of the store with some eel, some spring rolls that had pork in them that I had to throw away, enough sesame seeds to last a lifetime, inari skins, imitation crab, bonito flakes, kombu, two bamboo mats and absolutely no sushi rice. Because who needs to remember one of the two things you actually went in to buy. 

I eventually remedied the rice situation and got to work putting some delicious eel and sushi rice onto nori sheets.

Then I channeled my inner sushi master and began to roll.

And failed. Quite a few times. It turns out that rolling sushi is not as easy as they make it look at the restaurant. Who knew? Oh, that's right. Everybody knew!

Anyway, I ended up with a few salvageable rolls that don't look too terrible in a picture (Eel, Inari, Cucumber and Krab Rolls, if you're wondering.

The most important part was the taste. Which was okay. Not great like I pictured in my head, but more like what you'd get if you ordered sushi from a restaurant that everyone described as "Meh, I guess I'd eat there if I had to."

So if you're ever in the market for completely average sushi, come on over, I'll be glad to make it. Maybe next time I'll even be able to make cucumber rolls that don't eventually fall apart!

Day Zero Project #89: Build a sand sculpture.

In honor of attending this year's The Fest 13, I decided to take the No Idea Records logo...

...and completely ruin it in the form of a very basic, and mostly scary, sand sculpture.

At least I tried!

Day Zero Project #59: Do some birdwatching.

This post will be long enough without any words, so I'll just skip ahead to the pictures of birds.

DISCLAIMER: I am no avian expert. These are probably labeled all wrong, but I gave a good 37-45% effort to finding the right name, so that'll have to do.

Osprey

Blue Heron

White Ibis

Sandwich Tern

Some bird I can't identify. But he's still awesome.

Royal Tern

Great Blue Heron

Green Heron

Egret

Some bird I can't identify. He looks angry about that fact, too.

Laughing Gulls

Marbled Godwits

Common Moorhen

Red-Bellied Woodpecker

Day Zero Project #2: Volunteer at an animal shelter.

I could do the normal thing and type a bunch of sarcastic, witty comments here, but you probably just came here for pictures of kittens. I'll get to those after a few formalities.

The place I volunteered is a cat shelter in St. Pete called Friends of Strays. I both fostered a group of five kittens collectively nicknamed "The Terribles" and have also been volunteering once a week in their adoption center. Where else can your volunteer work be playing with a bunch of awesome cats?

So, go check them out. Volunteer if you feel like it. But be careful; if you foster kittens you may just end up with a cat (or two) of your own...

...at least we did! Introducing Slayer, one of our fosters that we decided to take home because all her siblings got adopted and I didn't like seeing her there alone. She's terrible, but also she can be very cute...when she's sleeping. Mostly she's just terrible.

And Mayor Cuddles Von Mystery, Esq. aka Big Guy aka Big Love. He is an adult I bonded with while volunteering. He is pretty much the best cat that has ever lived. 

And because kitten pictures are the number one way to drive traffic to a site here's some pictures of the kittens we fostered. You'll be happy to know that all have now found great permanent homes.

And finally, as a warning, the following will happen if you foster five kittens. And it won't just happen once, it will happen every single day.